


The Cause

by cortue



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alias Inspired Lady Spy AU, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Gender or Sex Swap, Saving Tumblr Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26735377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortue/pseuds/cortue
Summary: “You could appear more self-assured,” Finch says, sarcastically.  “It’s not as if you’re being actively hunted in a hostile country with an enemy agent present.”
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	The Cause

**Author's Note:**

> A stand-alone scene from a long since abandoned WIP, where Reese and Finch are lady spies on opposite sides of an Alias AU world. Reese makes it a point to ask Finch what the weather is like in Moscow every time they see each other, just to see if Finch is in the mood to point out that Russia is a big place, she is not necessarily from Moscow, and Americans really ought to crack open a geography book once in a while, OR the mood to say something pithy like, “Cold.” One day, Reese finds out that K-Directorate is attempting a hit on Finch’s life and Reese decides to intervene. And scene:

“You could appear more self-assured,” Finch says, sarcastically. “It’s not as if you’re being actively hunted in a hostile country with an enemy agent present.”

Joan is standing with her back against the wall near the window, watching. She’s made the man who’s been charged to look through this block, and he looks less than intent about his duties. The way he goes about it, he could be making a grocery list in his head. Sometimes the fact that everyone is so damn paranoid and secretive in this job works in her favor: this man probably has no idea how important his quarry is.

Still, she keeps one hand ready to pull her gun out from where keeps it in the waistband of her pants. If Shaw were here, she’d probably have a lot of things to say about holsters and how they were invented for a reason, and they’ve been working together long enough that she’d probably say all of them with her eyebrows. As Shaw’s not here, Joan doesn’t have to defend herself by pointing out that holsters just get in the way and besides, they chafe. Joan can do what she wants.

“My partner is coming to get me, eventually,” Joan says, watching K-Directorate’s finest pass right underneath her window, clearly ready to get home to his late night TV. Before she and Shaw had broken contact, she’d received a string of increasingly explicit warning messages telling her to stay put. For whatever reason, Shaw seemed to think Joan doesn’t know how to handle herself rationally in a crisis.

**Spade 21/1/13 17:32**

_you’ve been made get to cover_

**Spade 21/1/13 17:32**

_and stay there_

**Spade 21/1/13 17:32**

_I mean it_

**Spade 21/1/13 17:47**

_whatever stupid thing you’re planning don’t_

**Spade 21/1/13 17:49**

_I will not break you out of prison again you’ve hit your quota_

**Spade 21/1/13 18:01**

_and if I did, I would make you wait at least 36 hours_

Shaw actually might, Joan thinks. The thing is, though, if she didn’t know any better, she’d think Shaw might’ve actually developed a fondness for her. A very small fondness. Probably not enough fondness to cover for the fact that she’d stopped the hit taken out on one of the most dangerous minds the K-Directorate had ever cultivated. She turns to see Finch hasn’t moved, still sitting in the desk chair against the wall.

“And I’d be a lot more concerned about the enemy agent thing if you hadn’t just been burned by your own people,” she points out. She thinks she sees a flash of anger on Finch’s face before it’s controlled, silenced. 

“You think I need an agency to be dangerous, Ms. Reese?” Finch asks, and Joan’s never wanted to be able to take this woman apart more, get to see how she works. She knows she’s only getting the deceivingly calm surface and even that’s enough to fascinate her.

“No,” Joan says, comfortably, “but seeing as you’ve been forcibly unemployed, perhaps I can convince you to join up with my side.“

“Oh, yes, America,” Finch says dryly. “I hear you have fifty different kinds of toothpaste. A magical place, I’m sure.”

“I was thinking of appealing on a bit more personal level than that,” Joan says, amused more than Finch probably expected. “Isn’t there a quote about how the two of us would share more in common than our handlers?”

“I believe the sentiment you are referring to was applied to soldiers fighting in trench warfare,” Finch corrects.

“Are we not soldiers, Finch?” Joan asks, and it comes out more quietly serious than she meant it to. Finch meets her eye from across the room, and it seems they do have something in common after all. This silence, this shared silence, in which live all their dead. 

It’s probably to avoid such silence that Joan charges forward like she does. It’s probably to avoid such silence that Joan does a lot of things. Why she gets out of bed in the middle of the night and finds the nearest open bar, why she has more scars that should have killed her than people she calls up at Christmas.

“Besides,” Joan says, lightly, walking over, “there must be something, statistically, we have in common, don’t you think? Apart from an interest in meteorology?”

“Yes, do continue to beat the dead horse, Ms. Reese,” Finch says, not reacting to her getting closer, “it is not as though it can feel anything anymore.”

“My name is Joan,” she points out, for no reason she can really explain.

“Of course it is,” Finch says, smiling darkly, and she hasn’t moved, even though Joan is standing right in front of her. Joan thinks she’d do a lot of stupid things to see Finch miss a single step, just once to be completely not composed, and it’s not like there’s a lot holding her back from doing stupid things on a good day.

“You could at least do me the courtesy of listening to what I’d have to say,” she says reasonably, close enough that she can lean over, that she can make Finch acknowledge her. “Seeing as I saved your life tonight.”

“Oh?” Finch asks, looking up, and Joan knows immediately that she’s grossly misjudged her opponent. “And why did you do that, Ms. Reese?” She looks completely self -possessed, still, even with all of the advantages Joan currently has in the situation, and something about the way she is smiling slightly makes Joan pause. They stay there, a minute in frozen silence, and then Finch seems to move forward slightly, like she is going on the attack. Joan knows the smartest thing to do would be to back off but why on earth would she do that? Why, when she is so very interested in what this woman is going to do?

“I’m waiting,” Finch says, lightly. “Do you have nothing to say? Not even about dental hygiene?” Joan would laugh but she feels like she’s on too high alert, waiting for something to happen. Wanting. “Perhaps I could give you some of my arguments then, if you wouldn’t mind coming down to my level?”

“What?” Joan manages to ask, after a second. She’s surprisingly short of breath.

“This is cricking my neck,” Finch says, as if they are having a normal conversation and Joan is being a minor inconvenience.

“Oh,” Joan says, and for whatever reason, it seems perfectly acceptable to kneel then, on the floor. She is a tall woman; her gaze is still only slightly lower than Finch’s now, at her throat.

“Good,” Finch says, placing a hand on Joan’s shoulder to steady her. “Now, I’m sure I could remember everything the agency told me to say when attempting to turn a double agent, if you would like to hear that? I believe there are some people working in a psychiatric department somewhere that worked very hard on those words.”

“I’ve heard them,” Joan says, honestly, because she has. Shaw had taken three weeks to break her out of a holding cell once. It had been a long three weeks. “Not interested.”

“I won’t waste time then,” Finch says, her hand trailing up Joan’s throat, to her jaw. Joan’s body feels magnetized; every part of her wants to be the part that Finch is touching. “But what of my cause, Ms. Reese?” Joan thinks about how this woman is probably not the sort to get burned and live out the rest of her life in quiet obscurity. She thinks there are some people in the K-Directorate that are going to be very sorry, very soon. 

“What if I had a use for you?” Finch asks, and her hand is in Joan’s hair now, carding it back, tilting her head to the side to expose her throat. Joan lets it happen. She feels pulled inexorably towards something in Finch’s expression. It’s a good feeling.

“Then I,” she swallows. Her throat is so dry. “Then I would say I’m listening.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr May 2013 [here](https://cortue.tumblr.com/post/50026682826/sexy-lady-spy-shenanigans-though). Ported to ao3 in 2020.


End file.
